How To Add A Video To Your WordPress Site

You have probably worked out by now that I am a big fan of video.  Both for marketing and as a content-delivery tool.

But adding a video to a WordPress page or post can be a little confusing.  Here is what I do, and why.

How To Upload a Video To YouTube and Embed it on your WordPress SiteAs you are probably aware, Google owns YouTube.  This is why, when you do a search on Google, you will very often see a YouTube video on page 1 of the search results.  So it makes sense to get your video onto YouTube.  That way, when someone searches for your keywords, there is a good chance they will find your video.  In fact, it is generally easier to get a video on page 1 of Google than it is to get a blog post there for the same keywords.

So the first step is always, for me, to get the video onto YouTube.  If you don’t actually want the video to be seen publicly, you can set it to Unlisted on YouTube rather than Public, which will mean that only people with the link can find it.  It can still be embedded on a web site if it is Unlisted.

Embedding is the term used to get the video to appear on your web site.  WordPress makes this really easy.  You simply type the URL of your video into your post or page when you are editing it, and the video will appear immediately.  You do need to use the following format

https:// youtube.com/watch?v=

NOTE: I have put a space between the // and the y, so that MY WordPress doesn’t try to convert that into a video.  You will also have the video id at the end of the URL.

You get this URL by going to the page on YouTube where you watch the video, and it is in the browser at the top of the page.

One more thing.  In YouTube, don’t forget to put in a link to your post or page.  And make sure it is the full URL, with the http:// at the front, or it will not be clickable.

Want more?  See this earlier post on How To Upload a Video To YouTube and Embed it On Your WordPress Site

Now, embedding a video in your WordPress site is not so tricky after all!  And, having it on YouTube will give your traffic a boost as well.